Rael’s POVShe looks at me as though I’ve already touched her soul. I guess I have, we all have.There’s nothing left in her expression of the fire and defiance that lit her eyes back in the obsidian chamber. That’s not weakness. No, this is something else entirely. This is surrender and not the kind that breaks, it's the kind that becomes holy, sacred and transformative.Her fingers stretch toward me, and I take her hand with the kind of reverence a man might give a blade sharp enough to split his heart in two.I waited, I waited through every breath, through every cursed heartbeat while Maddox and Dagen devoured her. I heard the sounds she made. I smelled the way she bloomed for them. I saw her body tremble between theirs, undone and rebuilt. And still I waited because I knew she would want me after, I knew she had to want me because she's also mine.Vane stands beside me, quiet, watching her with eyes that miss nothing. He is always composed, always calculating, but tonight he’s no
Maddox POVDagen is already lifting her, spinning her so her chest is pressed to his. I see the feral glint in his eyes, and for a moment, our hatred simmers between us like a blade in the dark.Then he thrusts into her, and she shatters again.She gasps his name this time. His. And I want to rip her away from him and remind her who took her first. Who made her scream without a name.But I wait. My hands slide along her skin as she rides his cock, as Dagen growls into her shoulder, as her body gives again, convulsing with another climax. I watch the sweat bead at the back of her neck, the way her spine arches, the flush that stains her breasts and throat and face. I watch her unravel.when Dagen grits his teeth and curses and comes inside her, I push him aside and take her again.She is slick with both of us now. Her eyes are glazed, lips parted, chest heaving, and she says my name like a prayer.“Maddox... please…”That word almost undoes me.I grip her hips and drive into her with e
Maddox POVHer breath is hot against my neck, her body pressed so tightly between mine and Dagen’s that there is nowhere left for her to go. She trembles, not from fear, not truly, but from the unbearable tension that coils beneath her skin, a tension I feel mirrored in every nerve along my own. I can smell her arousal now, thick and undeniable, mixing with the sharp tang of the Silvermoon rising behind us. It bleeds into the air, seeps into the marrow of my bones, until nothing else matters but her.She belongs to me. Every shiver, every heartbeat, every frantic flicker of her gaze should be mine alone to command. Yet she is between us, caught in the heat of two bodies that both refuse to yield. I feel Dagen's arm brush against mine as he presses into her back, his breath rough as it falls across her shoulder. I want to tear him away from her, rip him from the moment, from the earth itself. But my hand is already sliding beneath the curve of her jaw, tilting her face toward mine, nee
Veyra POVWaking up, I’m dragged back to reality with a gasp, and I watch as the obsidian shatters and falls down. My eyes flick around, and I’m in a small room. I thought I heard the screams of the other women.“How are you?”I turn and see Dagen leaning against the wall. He’s here? Has he been here the entire time?“You barely made a sound, but then again, you’ve not had much hardship in your life.”He steps toward me.“It...” My head shakes. “Why do you hate me so much?”“Our families have never got along,” he explains. “We’ve been enemies, it’s one of those things. You were brought up to hate us, I was brought up to hate you.” He shrugs like it’s nothing.“How was this meant to work?” I ask, gesturing to the shattered obsidian.“You know how. It shows you the memories which are your darkest, most painful, and hardest. It shows you the moments of your life when you battled to survive, or nearly died. It shows you what you went through that made you who you are.”Mine, not my mates,
Veyra POVI'm falling again, and this time it's different to before. This time it's not like I'm tumbling into my own fractured recollections, or even been dragged into one of my mates. It's like a combination of both. It's somehow colder and darker than before like the earth itself has stopped breathing.The obsidian hums even when it disappears from my view, but the sound sinks into my marrow and makes me forget how to move. There's nothing to guide me into this memory, no familiarity, or persons I recognise. All that's here is dry and cracked ground beneath my feet, and the air that tastes like old bold and even older sorrow. I hear the wind begin to whisper again, not through the leaves like I would expect, but through the bones of trees long dead, their twisted branches reaching toward the sky like fingers clawing for something they once had and can never grasp again.My eyes scan everything and the light is a dusky orange, the sun sinking into the horizon like it’s trying to
Veyra POVMy breath catches in my throat, the last vision yanked away like a curtain torn from its rail, and I collapse inward as if the weight of what I’ve seen is too much for one soul to carry.It should be over. I want it to be over, but even I know that it isn't.The obsidian hums around me. The air begins to shift again. It presses against my skin with a foreign kind of cold, an unfamiliar bite that doesn’t belong to my memories. It sinks into my bones like a warning. My limbs go still. My breath holds without permission.I’m not falling this time like before. I’m not tumbling through my own past or slipping into memories I’ve tried to bury. I’m standing upright. But the air smells wrong. Not like fire or blood or ash, though I have no doubt all of those will come soon after, but like something older. Wounded. Abandoned.The ground beneath me is cracked and dry, the trees brittle skeletons that claw at the sky like they’ve long since given up hope of spring. The sun is low and a